31 July 2009, 09:56

Firefox to reach 1 billion downloads today

Mozilla's popular Firefox web browser is quickly approaching one billion downloads for all versions since it was officially launched. According to the Firefox Download Guesstimator, the total number of downloads should reach one billion between 13:30 and 15:00 GMT today.

The download milestone comes just one month after the launch of version 3.5 of Firefox, which was downloaded more than four million times in less than 24 hours after it was released. In June of last year, the Firefox 3.0 release actually set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of downloads in a 24 hour period with over 8 million downloads.

According to Stat Counter, Firefox usage is steadily rising and is really taking the wind out of Internet Explorer's sails. Firefox now holds over 30 per cent of the global browser market share, while Internet Explorer usage is on a steady decline, now with only approximately 60 per cent of the browser market, down from over 90 per cent just a few years ago.

Mozilla has created a Twitter feed for people to keep track of the current total and a new web site called One Billion Plus You, is expected to go live on Monday.

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